Cancer: what to do when your dog is diagnosed

Statistics presented by veterinary insurance companies report that 25% of dogs will develop cancer before they die. For some reason, the cancer rate in cats is not as high as that in dogs. Therefore, this discussion will focus on dogs. However, much of what applies to dogs also applies to cats.

Sadly, labrador-type dogs are at highest risk for cancer. Other breeds, like Great Danes and Saint Bernards have a generic tendency to develop cancer at a young age – for some of these dogs, it’s as early as one and two-years-old.

A truly staggering statistic is the one that tells us that almost 90% of cancers are preventable! This means these cancers are due to environmental exposures and there are things the pet owner can do to help prevent cancer.

These preventable exposures range from vaccines, to lawn chemicals, to inflammatory ingredients found in commonly available pet foods.

Depending on the type of tumor, conventional medicine will present different options for treatment to the owner of a dog with cancer. These options can include: surgery, chemotherapy, modified chemotherapy with prednisones only, radiation, or do nothing.

Alternative medicine has the benefit of offering other complementary therapies as well. These other therapies include: detoxification, herbal therapy, homeopathic therapy, acupuncture, and others.

For the pet owner who must decide what treatment to pursue, the list of options is overwhelming! To make the decision more difficult, there is ample evidence in humans that conventional cancer treatment may treat the initial tumor, but several years later, the patient often develops a different kind of cancer as a consequence of the initial oncological treatment – chemo and radiation are not without side effects.

Several years ago, I had the honor to know a wonderful Scottish terrier named Basil. Basil had bone cancer of his left front leg. His owners were in a position where they were able to pursue the best of all treatments: he underwent surgery to remove the leg, he received chemotherapy, was fed a custom formulated diet, and spent the rest of his life making sure that he was detoxified through herbal means. Unfortunately for Basil, three years later, he developed cancer of the liver.

The liver cancer diagnosis was bittersweet. Normal life expectancy after bone cancer diagnosis in a dog is about 10 months. Basil survived almost 40 months with great quality of life!

Basil’s owners believed strongly that the combination of treatment methods were what made a difference in extending Basil’s longevity and quality-of-life. These alternatives included a complete nutrition consult and energy therapy with a reiki practitioner.

The nutritional consult for Basil not only recommended food to help him through his cancer treatment, but also provided balanced nutritional information for the rest of his life. Because food is the biggest thing any pet owner does for his/her pets, it made sense for Basil’s owners to start with a great diet.

Scientific evidence reports that diets high in carbohydrates accelerate the growth of many types of cancer. Therefore, just one part of Basil’s diet plan started with a grain free formulation.

While not every pet owner is able to feed a raw diet, Basil was fortunate that his family could. This played a large role in Basil’s many years between cancer episodes.

The other alternative treatment that Basil underwent was reiki. Any human who has had reiki work will tell you after a session he or she feels rejuvenated, relaxed, and energized. The reiki practitioner directs cosmic energy help the recipient. The attention and the euphoric feeling from a reiki session go along way to provide quality of life for cancer patients. For some, energy work helps the body cleanse and detoxify itself, in addition to the good feeling that comes from a reiki session.

Because cancer is inflammation gone wrong, anything that reduces inflammation can help slow the progression of the cancer is process. For some, detoxification, and good food are enough or are the answer to stop the progression of cancer. For others, the answer comes from reducing stress and decreasing adrenal related inflammation and illness – which is where reiki can help.

Dr. Cathy Alinovi DVM

As a practicing veterinarian, Dr. Cathy treated 80% of what walked in the door — not with expensive prescriptions — but with adequate nutrition. Now retired from private practice, her commitment to pets hasn’t waned and she looks forward to impacting many more pet parents through her books, research, speaking and consulting work. Learn more at drcathyvet.com

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Rodney Habib just did a great TEDx presentation about this very subject. He too, pointed out the benefits of nutrition when it comes to preventing, and treating cancer. I lost my last dog to cancer and 6 months before him, I lost an elderly cat to cancer, as well. An acquaintance of mine did Reiki for my dog. It made a huge difference. When it was time to let him go, she did Reiki from her home. My guy closed his eyes, breathed a huge sigh, and then we helped him pass. I would guess that the reason cats don’t get cancer as often as dogs is because many cats are indoor so they usually aren’t covered with monthly flea preventatives, given monthly heart worm pills and aren’t exposed to toxic lawn chemicals. Here’s Rodney’s TED talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sE96vd8W40

We lost three cats to cancer in the past 2.5 years, so I have my doubts about the cancer rate for cats not being as high as for dogs. Though that may be true, cancer in cats must certainly be on the rise. I truly suspect that it’s the horrible foods, even among the best of them, that is to blame – it is all contaminated in some way, as is the human food supply. When I was researching options for treating my kitties, so much of what would work for a dog won’t work for a cat – their physiology is just different enough that some things are toxic to cats that aren’t for dogs. There is a program called The Truth About Cancer created by Ty Bollinger that is about human cancer and has lots of amazing information, and being as distraught about my one kitty last year as I was, I even asked if he could develop a similar program dedicated to cats, but I never heard back. I still wish for such a program – with feline cancer on the rise, so many kitty parents would love to have good, solid information available all in one place that they could refer to.

It would be interesting to split the cat statistics t differentiate between cats that never go out and cats that do. It would also be interesting to see a breakdown of cats depending on the number of vaccinations received.

What vaccines are cancerous? Isn’t majority of vaccines simply, just a small dose of the virus to create antibodies? Please explain what vaccines and boosters are cause for concern and what are you supposed to do, seems like a no win situation. Feeding raw is very very hard in my opinion, not from a money standpoint but from acquiring the food. I feed the honest kitchen and also home cook.

Most vaccinations have adjuvants, something added to the vaccine to help the body’s response to the vax. In most case, the adjuvants are mercury and aluminum. The increase in cancers in cats, namely Fibrosarcoma, is the reason vaccinations are no longer given just in the scruff of the neck and are recommended to be given every 3 years rather than yearly. There are now adjuvent free vaccinations, but many vets don’t, or won’t use them. Our vets don’t need any boosters, with the exception of rabies as required by law, when they are adults. If in doubt about their immunity to certain diseases, you can have vaccination titers done.

I switched to a homemade raw food diet about a year and a half ago, when my brain started working…and I realized that I was paying $2+ per pound for garbage in a pretty bag. I realized that I can go to the market and buy meat for that price. For a while I bought whatever meat I could find at my local market; I recommend that you do a search for local meat suppliers for restaurants, which is where I buy my meat now.(frozen raw meat and chicken necks). For the veggie mix, I buy almost everything at Costco; they have a great selection of organic foods! I buy only organic for many reasons; at Costco I buy sweet potatoes,broccoli, sliced apples, chia seeds, coconut oil if it doesn’t come from Southeast Asia (if it does, I buy Nutiva at Whole Foods, where I also found the best price on turmeric) I add a small amount of black pepper to make the turmeric more bio-available, and at the local market I buy organic greens: lots of chard, some dandelion green or spinach. I have 4 large Northern Breed dogs, so I make a huge batch and freeze enough to last us a month or so. If you are already making your dog food, it just takes lining up where you can get the ingredients; and after a few batches, it doesn’t seem like so much work!

We just lost our Golden to hemangiosarcoma. I think this piece is misleading by suggesting that as much as 90% 0f cancer is preventable. Data from several credible sources certainly doesn’t paint such a rosy picture about the ability to prevent cancer in dogs. Moreover, if you’re going to write about such a deeply important subject, providing such data along with basic information about diet and nutrition is insufficient. The subject matter is far too complex, and a great number of dog owners are desperately searching for a clear path toward prevention and treatment in an environment where too many veterinarians are not on the ball and others are peddling mushrooms as a miracle cure in an effort to take advantage of dog owners who are in a deeply vulnerable state.